About the SAHGB

The Society exists to encourage an interest in the history of architecture, to provide opportunities for the exchange and discussion of ideas related to this subject and to publish, in its journal, Architectural History, the results of original research.

The suggestion that led to the foundation of the Society was made in 1955 by Turpin C. Bannister to Frank Jenkins, a British architect and scholar who had gone to work with Bannister at the University of Illinois. Initially conceived of as a chapter of the American Society of Architectural Historians (of which Bannister had been a founder-member in 1940), it was determined in 1956 that the British Society should be autonomous. The early personnel were largely architects and teachers: the Chairmen of the first meetings were Bruce Allsopp and William A. Singleton, the latter of the York Institute of Architectural Study, which became the unofficial home of the Society.

Today the Society has no official location and its activities take members to all parts of the UK. It is a Company Limited by Guarantee under UK law and a Registered British Charity, governed by an Executive Committee of elected and appointed officers. The Committee seeks to maintain the founding principles of the Society, but its role has expanded greatly so that it now also represents the interests of architectural history in the UK to a wide range of governmental and non-governmental bodies in the education and heritage sectors. The Society only lobbies on behalf of the study of architectural history. It does not campaign on conservation issues.The following links will open PDF documents for the formation of the SAHGB as a company, namely the Articles of Association of the SAHGB of 1964, and amendments to those Articles made in 1992.